Pioneers of the Old Southwest [7]
On the evening of the 17th of November the twelve arrived safely on their land on the "Etkin" (Yadkin), having been six weeks on the march. They found with joy that, as ever, the Lord had provided for them. This time the gift was a deserted cabin, "large enough that we could all lie down around the walls. We at once made preparation for a little Lovefeast and rejoiced heartily with one another."
In the deserted log cabin, which, to their faith, seemed as one of those mansions "not built with hands" and descended miraculously from the heavens, they held their Lovefeast, while wolves padded and howled about the walls; and in that Pentacostal hour the tongue of fire descended upon Brother Gottlob, so that he made a new song unto the Lord. Who shall venture to say it is not better worth preserving than many a classic?
We hold arrival Lovefeast here In Carolina land, A company of Brethren true, A little Pilgrim-Band, Called by the Lord to be of those Who through the whole world go, To bear Him witness everywhere And nought but Jesus know.
Then, we are told, the Brethren lay down to rest and "Br Gottlob hung his hammock above our heads"--as was most fitting on this of all nights; for is not the Poet's place always just a little nearer to the stars?
The pioneers did not always travel in groups. There were families who set off alone. One of these now claims our attention, for there was a lad in this family whose name and deeds were to sound like a ballad of romance from out the dusty pages of history. This family's name was Boone.
Neither Scots nor Germans can claim Daniel Boone; he was in blood a blend of English and Welsh; in character wholly English. His grandfather George Boone was born in 1666 in the hamlet of Stoak, near Exeter in Devonshire. George Boone was a weaver by trade and a Quaker by religion. In England in his time the Quakers were oppressed, and George Boone therefore sought information of William Penn, his co-religionist, regarding the colony which Penn had established in America. In 1712 he sent his three elder children, George, Sarah, and Squire, to spy out the land. Sarah and Squire remained in Pennsylvania, while their brother returned to England with glowing reports. On August 17, 1717, George Boone, his wife, and the rest of his children journeyed to Bristol and sailed for Philadelphia, arriving there on the 10th of October. The Boones went first to Abingdon, the Quaker farmers' community. Later they moved to the northwestern frontier hamlet of North Wales, a Welsh community which, a few years previously, had turned Quaker. Sarah Boone married a German named Jacob Stover, who had settled in Oley Township, Berks County. In 1718 George Boone took up four hundred acres in Oley, or, to be exact, in the subdivision later called Exeter, and there he lived in his log cabin until 1744, when he died at the age of seventy-eight. He left eight children, fifty-two grandchildren, and ten greatgrandchildren, seventy descendants in all--English, German, Welsh, and Scotch-Irish blended into one family of Americans.*
* R. G. Thwaites, "Daniel Boone", p. 5.
Among the Welsh Quakers was a family of Morgans. In 1720 Squire Boone married Sarah Morgan. Ten years later he obtained 250 acres in Oley on Owatin Creek, eight miles southeast of the present city of Reading; and here, in 1734, Daniel Boone was born, the fourth son and sixth child of Squire and Sarah Morgan Boone. Daniel Boone therefore was a son of the frontier. In his childhood he became familiar with hunters and with Indians, for even the red men came often in friendly fashion to his grandfather's house. Squire Boone enlarged his farm by thrift. He continued at his trade of weaving and kept five or six looms going, making homespun cloth for the market and his neighbors.
Daniel's father owned grazing grounds several miles north of the homestead and each season he sent his stock to the range. Sarah Boone and her little Daniel drove the cows. From early spring till late autumn, mother and son lived in a rustic cabin alone on the frontier.